


One and One

by Mossgreen



Category: Slave Breakers - maculategiraffe
Genre: Canon Compliant, Domestic Fluff, Mathematics, Other, Pre-Canon, Slavery, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 01:05:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15304044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mossgreen/pseuds/Mossgreen
Summary: "You always-- you always helped me with my homework, Yves.." A snapshot where Yves helps Valor with her homework.Approximately ten years or so before Bran, the first part of Maculategiraffe's Slave Breakers trilogy. (Classified as pre-canon even though Mac's written loads of canonical stuff that takes place before the main trilogy and some of her canon stuff takes place before this.)





	One and One

Yves had retreated to the library to wrestle with the latest theorem espoused in the newest of the books Holden had left in his room. He hadn't even noticed his master put his head round the door earlier before retreating when he saw the look of rapt concentration on Yves' face as he worked. 

The calm was not to last long however.

“Yves...” The speaker, a dark-haired, sallow-skinned girl of about nine, was clutching what Yves recognised to be a maths textbook. 

He put his pencil down, and turned to face her. “Yes, Miss Valor?”

“Help me with my homework.” She lifted the book towards him imperiously, and he pushed his own work to one side before lifting her into his lap. 

“What's the problem?” Yves asked, a smile softening the edges of his mouth as Valor laid her book on the desk. 

“That one,” she said, stabbing at a particular question. “I can't do word problems.”

“Of course you can, Miss. You just need to break them down. So.... _Ilya had 16 bags of 28 marbles. He bought 17 more marbles. How many marbles does he have now?_ Well, that's in two parts, isn't it. You need to work out how many marbles he has to start off with. How many bags has he got?”

“Sixteen.” The reply was a little sulky.

“And how many marbles are in each bag?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“So how do we work out how many marbles that is altogether?”

“Multiply them...?”

Yves reached for the sheet of paper he had been jotting his own work on, and turned it over to use the blank back before writing clearly 

_16_  
_x 28_  
_____

 

_____

He put the pencil into Valor's hand. “You can do this bit, Miss, I know you can.” 

It was a few minutes of careful working out before Valor produced the answer of 448. “Is that it?”

“Half-way there, Miss. He bought another seventeen marbles, so what do we need to do now?”

“Add seventeen?” 

“So let's do that.”  
Valor produced a final answer of 465 and put the pencil down.

“You need to transfer that to your book, Miss Valor,” Yves pointed out gently.

“I don't see why. You can do it for me.”

“Maybe I can, Miss. But I may not – I am not allowed to.”

“I don't see why.”

“Because that is called cheating, and that is like lying. And you know your daddy doesn't like it when I lie. He takes my books away, and makes me listen to him read the sums out and work them out without being able to write them down.”

“They wouldn't have to know.”

Yves said nothing for a moment, but he reached for Valor's workbook, setting it beside his neatly-written sum. “I think your teacher would see that it isn't in your writing, and she would tell your daddy, and we would both be in trouble. And that is what a lie is – a story that isn't true, but that you want people to think is true. Anyway, you're clever enough to do these yourself. Let's show your teacher that, shall we? Here's the next question... _Svetlana had 35 boxes of 15 pencils. She bought 26 more pencils. How many pencils does she have now?_ ”


End file.
